List, Ye Landsmen! A Romance of Incident

by William Clark Russell

I sought to shift the helm of his mind by talking about the dollars below; by speaking about the crew and my secret distrust of Yan Bol; by calling his attention to the look of his brig as she floated, with aslant spars, through the moonlight, flowing lengths of the sails curving in alabaster beyond the shadow in their hollows, the water, black as ink under her bowsprit, pouring aft in fire and snow. But all to no purpose. He looked and seemed not to see; he repeated, in a mouthing, absent way, my sentences about Bol and other matters, and immediately struck back again into his talk about heaven, his soul, the Jewess he had dreamt of, and the like.

But, even without seeing him, even without hearing him, I should have known that there was something wrong with the man by the behavior of his dog. I do not say that all dogs have souls; but I am as sure that Galloon had a soul of his own, after its kind, as that my eyes are mates. As a change slowly came over Greaves, so slowly changed Galloon. I would notice the dog watching his master’s face at table, and found a score of human emotions in the creature’s expression. I’d see him lying at Greaves’ door if the captain was within, when formerly he would be on deck cruising about among the men or skylarking aft with me. If I called him, he’d come slowly. There was no more capering up to me, no more buoyant greetings, no leapings and lickings and short, eager yelps of salutation in response to the many things I’d say to him. We make much of human love, I would think while caressing the dog or looking at him, and the love of man we call a passion; but the love of the dog we call an instinct. Yet is not the instinct nobler than the passion? Purity it has that is faultless. Is human passion pure to faultlessness? There is selfishness in human passion, but the love of yonder dog for its master is without selfishness. Many qualities enter into the passion of love; but the love of yonder dog is a primary quality in him. It is as gold among metals. Supposing analysis possible, then analyze the brute’s affection, and you find not a hair’s weight, not a dust-grain’s bulk, of vitiating element.

The lady Aurora was quick to notice the change in Greaves. Her lids moved swiftly upon her eyes, and their lashes were a veil, and she had an art of glancing without seeming to glance. She did not like him, and would not appear to see him more often than courtesy obliged. Her rapid glances, therefore, on occasions when she would have found other occupation for her eyes, told me that she was struck by the man’s looks, that she wondered at them and guessed their significance. I was no doctor. For all I could tell she might have some knowledge under that head. I fancied this from her manner of looking at Greaves.

So one day, when she and I were alone in the cabin, Bol on the lookout above, and the captain in his berth, I endeavored to converse with her about my friend; but to no purpose. Intelligibility vanished in signs, shakes of the head, dumb pointings to the brow and ribs. She had, indeed, picked up a little English. She was able to pronounce the names of various articles of food, also had several English nautical terms at her tongue’s end; but when it came to trying to talk about Greaves’ state of health, there was nothing for it but to crook our brows, hunch our backs, and work meaning into nonsense with postures.

Yet I managed to discover that the lady and I were agreed in this; that Greaves had received some internal injury from his fall, that it was slowly sickening him, and affecting his mind.

Nevertheless, he went about as usual, punctually took sights, attended at meals, was up and down during the day and night. He was very rational in all the orders he gave to the men, in all direct instructions to me respecting shipboard discipline and routine. It was by fits and starts that his growing wildness showed, and always when he had me alone; and then the matter of his discourse was dreams and religion and death. Not that he talked as though he supposed his end was approaching; upon his words lay no shadow of the melancholy that is cast by the dread event when the heart knows, dimly and mysteriously, that it is coming. He chattered as if for argument’s sake; postulated to disprove his own assertions, but he was seldom logical, often devout, filled to the very twang of his nose with fervor, and at other times, and on a sudden, as impious as young John Bunyan.

What think you of this character of a seaman, of a plain north-country merchant seaman; you whose ideas of the nautical man are gotten from Smollett’s studies, from the delightful portraits of dear Captain Marryatt? But, Jack, bless ye! you, who have been to sea, you who have sailed ten times round the world, who have swung your hammock in a score of forecastles, and who have outweathered Satan himself in a dozen different aspects of ship’s captains, you, mate, will approve this sketch, will recognize its truth, will tell the landlubbers that at sea are many varieties of men—men who swear not, who are gentle, faithful in their duty below; men who are a little crazy, who drink deeply and are devils in their thoughts and madmen in their behavior, but trucklers and slaverers to those who hire them; men who are hearty, pimpled, broad of beam, verdant with the grog blossom and green in naught else, moist in the weather eye, and bow-legged by great seas.

One Sunday morning, when we had left the island a little more or less than three weeks behind us, Greaves said to me at the breakfast table:

“I shall hold divine service this morning on deck.”

I stared, but said nothing.